A Land Claim, Some Hard Luck...Stuffed

Before i try to explAiN whAt happened when I sold my farm to the Land Claims people, I need to make it clear: I never wanted to sell. First, the story behind the story.

 

- Meyer Du Toit

Fifteen years ago I lost the use of my right shoulder as the result of a road accident. Until then I had travelled the country building fruit packaging machines. I was very good at it. After the accident I could not even brush my teeth. As my whole family was into farming, when I was paid out by the Road Accident Fund, it made good sense to buy a farm with the money.

In 2002 I bought a farm called Shamrock, 5km from Levubu in Limpopo for R500,000. There was nothing on the land except a house; no irrigation or pumps; no boreholes; no reservoirs. We had to do everything from scratch. Because we had no debt on the farm, Absa lent us the money to buy all the necessary pumps and irrigation pipes and banana plants. It cost a fortune. But there was money to be made in bananas. We also planted guavas. We worked hard. Sometimes we worked through the night to water the bananas.

It normally works likes this: every year your banana bunch gets bigger. So you start showing a profit only from year three. Before that your banana bunches are too small. Your tonnage per hectare also goes up each season. We were working ourselves to the bone to get to the point where, in 2005, we reckoned that we’d start showing a profit.